How to Make Managing Software Assets Simple

By By Sumir Karayi, 1E for, CRN June 12, 2012

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IT Asset Compliance Chaos
When organizations depend on limited spreadsheets or off-the-shelf software asset management (SAM) tools to manage IT assets, chaos reigns. To make matters worse, vendors often lack a clear view of the licenses their customer owns, as some may have been purchased independently, via a reseller, from a computer store or online. It’s a pragmatic reality that organizations will have software on users’ computers that is not used and/or not licensed. So how will they ensure compliance?

To fully protect your customers against software audit liability, you must help them reconcile two things: What they own and what is deployed. Any solution that doesn’t do this will only ever be able to say, “You’ve got 20,000 Microsoft Visio out there,” rather than, “You’ve got a liability of 1,500 copies of unlicensed Visio out there.” One can only lead to panic and uncertainty, while the other provides clarity. By reconciling the licenses owned with those being used, your customers can get a better idea of how to minimize license liability and reduce costs.

In addition, how users view the software they have installed on their computers can add to the compliance headache. Users and/or business units claiming ownership of certain software as if it truly belongs to them, not the organization, handcuffs your customers from optimizing their software asset inventory and leads to massive overspending.

Vendors add another layer of complexity by offering a host of different software suites. Right sizing suite deployment is a key way to save your customers money. All too often application users have a professional edition when they only needed standard version. Many applications have free alternatives that work well for users who don’t need all the bells and whistles that a professional edition offers.

Putting a Proper Process in Place
All of the above factors contribute to an asset management nightmare that’s waiting to happen. Rather than using outdated snapshots of their assets, you can make software asset management (SAM) a stress-free, continual process by leveraging a SAM tool that:

• Presents a rationalized inventory of installed applications and license costs • Identifies unused software on users’ computers • Categorizes each installation of software according to its utilization rates • Allows license managers to automatically reclaim or uninstall applications • Provides in-depth reports quickly and delivers actionable insight

Doing so will empower your customers to eliminate unused licenses and demonstrate immediate software licensing savings. In addition, if there is no license liability, organization can simply reclaim the unused license and recycle it for future use. Depending on the amount of unused licenses reclaimed/elimination, your customers may be able to negotiate their maintenance contracts to better reflect actual usage. There is simply no reason for your clients to purchase extra, and unnecessary, licenses.

Traditional IT asset management approaches have been failing enterprises. Get your customers out of the spreadsheets nightmare so they can stop dreading time-intensive software audits and wasting money they don’t have. Lead your customers into the reality of software license optimization to get a true picture of license usage across the business, deliver immediate savings and make software asset management simple.